Every business has a few benchmark “productivity hacks” that help the organizations get more done in less time. In any case, business success greatly depends on how much employees contribute during their working hours. However, when the employees are not contributing, it will start cascading problems such as missed deadlines, cost overruns, delays, and loss of revenue. So, is your organization’s productivity dropping? Or if it’s not as much as it used to be, then with all your concerns, you have landed on the right page.
Many organizations depend on productivity management software to address specific areas of this concern. Did you know it is anticipated that the global productivity software market will reach a market valuation of
Nevertheless, productivity management software is not the “only” answer for this particular scenario; there are multiple other ways to improve office productivity. We will cover that section just after we take you through some commonly experienced obstacles within the organization that hinder office productivity. If you are facing obstacles as an organization, or your organization wants to bridge the productivity gap plaguing several industry sectors, focus on the following pain points.
Obstacles Organization Have to Address to Increase Office Productivity:
Lack of any of the below-mentioned parameters can lead to a dip in the average office productivity.
- Poor Work Environment: 57% of employees say it’s very important for them to work in an organization that values physiological and emotional well-being. Thereby emphasis should be on creating a positive work environment as it boosts the office productivity by 30%.
- Lack of Communication: Poor communication can affect 45% of the employee’s trust in the organization. On the contrary numbers say that increasing the internal communication within the organization is one way to improve office productivity as much as 25%. If communication is a challenge for your organization start working on it, it will help in reducing conflicts, misunderstandings, and mistakes.
- Negligible Engagement amongst Team Members: Trust is a crucial factor for team engagement. If trust is running low amongst members, then a light-hearted team-building activity will boost the morale of the team. Statistics suggest that employees who participate in team-building activity are 64% more productive at work at work than the employees who work alone.
- Zero Ground Rules: To minimize misunderstandings and confusion, ground rules work wonders as they promote acceptable behavior and productivity. It helps workers to have full-control over their work routine making them 29% more productive.
- Prioritization: Usually at workplace 7% employees have severe difficulty prioritizing their work. Prioritization is a crucial step in increasing productivity. Employees have to evaluate the urgency of each task and then focus on the most important task for being time-sensitive.
- Collaboration tools: Employees lacking collaborative work effort face hindrances in communication, consequentially, streamline nature of work takes a hit. Technology has taken a skyward ascent, so organizations should invest in collaboration tools as it can increase the success rate of project by 71%.
If these factors are not met, the organization has to cope with employee burnout, employee departure, and employees working remotely more often. As per research, the US industry has more than $300 billion in losses due to absenteeism, diminished productivity, and accidents. If you want to avoid such catastrophic loss, then deep dive into learning ways to improve office productivity to stop these mishaps from happening.
Seven Ways to Improve Office Productivity:
Just deep dive to learn a few impactful ways to improve office productivity!
1. Monitor your Employees Progress:
To execute projects that reap beneficial outcomes involves monitoring employee progress. 68% of the managers share the same thought that monitoring improves performance.
The best way to do it is to have a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) as mentioned below.
- Budgets
- Quality expectation
- Project timelines
How to ensure the KPIs are met? Throughout the course of the project, the KPI should be checked at regular intervals. It will help your organization keep track of the project’s progress, and fitting in new improvements will be prompt. If you are utilizing a tool for reporting KPIs, it will greatly increase the ease of monitoring and accuracy. Most importantly, the best part of achieving KPI is celebrating your success, as it will keep your team morale uplifted.
Take note that 19% of executives use objectives, KPIs, and goals to gauge productivity metrics, so you should, too.
2. Work on Realistic Goals:
Goals are important. Your entire organization will need reasonable and attainable goals. Because lack of goals is a major contributor to project failure. A statistical forecast by the project management institute states that 37% of project failures are directly connected to the lack of well-defined goals.
So now you might wonder how to decide whether your organization’s goals are clear, measurable, and realistic. It’s simple: ask yourself the following question mentioned in the image below to check whether your goals are reasonable.
The goals an organization sets for an individual will always be different than the goals set for a team. So, as a top-management leader, always take your team’s input into account regarding what kind of goals should be set for the team and an individual. Don’t miss out on this tactic. After all, people who set goals are 10 times more likely to achieve those goals.
3. Emphasize on Healthy Work Environment:
A positive work environment always bestows to increased productivity, improves employee engagement and growth, and promotes collaboration, better employee retention , and lastly better employee well-being. When your team members are content within the organization; they are more likely to think more creatively, stay organized at work for a longer time, support coworkers, and take calculated risks.
How to achieve it? Well, there are many ways of heightening the positive work environment. Out of them, Pomodoro Technique goes a long way as it helps the employees achieve their goals while keeping the process fun and light. The below image takes you through a few criteria; if your employee’s ticks those criteria, the pomodoro technique is made for your organization.
Here’s the Pomodoro technique for you all!!
The Pomodoro technique is a time management procedure in which employees put their full, undivided attention to a task for 25 minutes (also referred to as Pomodoro’s), followed by a 5-minute break, for every four pomodoros take an extended break of 15-30minutes.
Educate your employees about the following technique; it will keep them motivated and reach their daily deadlines. So, focus on having a positive work environment that encourages employees to hustle hard and at the same time emphasizes adequate breather in between work as it will push productivity by 12%.
4. Schedule Standing Meeting:
Unnecessary meetings hamper office productivity. For instance, 65% of senior managers consider meetings to prevent them from completing their work. 71% of the senior managers consider meetings to be inefficient and unproductive. Going by the stats, every discussion in the office doesn’t need to be a meeting because specific agendas can be addressed with simple group discussions or a standup meeting. Standup meeting is precisely what it sounds like: a discussion session where everyone stands.
The significant benefit of the standing meeting is that it reduces the inclination towards wasting time, which few employees may be fond of to get away with their work. Settling down comfortably during meetings, employees are more prone to chit-chats, and the meeting agenda can also left behind by running off a tangent. All these concerns are mitigated with standing meetings, as everyone is aware the meeting is supposed to be brief, forcing people to stick to the subject at hand. Below we provide 5 tips about how to conduct an effective stand up meeting.
5. Empower your Team with Right tools:
Your team may be filled with skilled, committed team members. Still, they can benefit from having good tools for the following reasons: improve work quality, effective collaboration, greater communication, easier performance tracking, and having the feasibility of remote work. In recent years the, project management tools have become very advanced; the best ones come with a built-in Kanban boards, and interesting collaboration tools that keep the employees organized and boost the organization’s efficiency.
If you seek out organizations using productivity software, you are in luck. The US productivity software market is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 12.7% from 2024 to 2030. All because, the need for productivity management software is taking on an upward trajectory in the market as organizations increasingly prioritize digital workspace management, optimizing resource utilization, and streamlining operations.
Here is image an of some of the office productivity software that your organization can benefit from:
6. A Big “No” to Multi-Tasking:
The graph above explains that the more an employee multi-tasks, the lesser is the quality of work and the opposite is also true. However, there are employees in every organization who consider multi-tasking as an effective way to get more work done. Seniors within every organization need to scrutinize the very aspect because if their employees are multi-tasking it will drop their productivity by 40%.
Employees should always be encouraged to focus on one task at a time, and it should be done on the basis of urgency and importance. At the same time, higher management should always encourage employees to ask for help whenever needed: for example, intimate when their plates are full with a long to-do list of work.
7. Incorporate a Reward System:
So many benefits of rewards and recognition showcase that it’s a tried and tested method that gets the employees engaged. If your organization doesn’t recognize employees’ good work, it’s time to incorporate a well-researched recognition program, as it leaves the essence of employee achievement and pushes productivity by 11.1%.
Employee recognition can happen in the form of gift cards, care packages, and bonuses. However, the best recognition methods are cost-effective. For example, an organization can create a wall of fame for workers who have gone above and beyond. Or, while conducting a meeting, share success stories of your organization that involved a specific co-worker.
Here, we conclude the ways to improve office productivity with employees within a team. But, every organization has many individual contributors for specific roles. Even though these individual contributors take the onus of massive projects based on caliber, too much work on them slows them down. As their productivity significantly contributes to the organization’s growth, here are a few tips to motivate individual contributors.
Here are a few simple ways to improve office productivity for individual contributors:
- Delegate the simpler tasks to reduce work stress by 33%
- Schedule your day strategically, as spending 12 minutes of planning can eliminate 2 hours of wasted time.
- Limiting your workplace distractions is vital, as presently, 60% of workers say they can’t go 30 minutes without distraction. (Try Pomodoro technique!)- link the highlighted part to the pomodoro technique above.
Conclusion:
You are asking yourself which strategy will increase your workplace productivity. At the end of the day, the best ways to improve office productivity start with business leaders who can curate an achievable framework for success. It is them who understand what motivates their individuals and teams. Because even with the best intentions, it is hard to muster motivation for high expectations on a daily basis; after all, we are “Humans”. Therefore, performing at the peak of your efficiency daily is not possible. However, a lot can be done with the suggestion mentioned above to maintain average consistency with your productivity. So, by the end of the day, your employees, rather than feeling disheartened, will feel gratified.
